Choosing Cams for Your Harley

Do you want high-end performance or
low-end torque? (You can’t have both.)

Do you want smooth running and good fuel
economy, or an all-out street racer? What is your trade-off between
maximum power and a machine you can ride every day, under all
conditions.

When you know what you want from your
engine, call FLO Headworks and we'll recommend the cams that will work
best with your riding style. At the same time, we'll probably recommend
our valve spring kit to get the most from your new cams.

Camshaft selection

How do you select an alternative to your
Harley-Davidson’s stock camshafts?

We asked "The Master", a world
famous cam designer, and his answer was, “Whatever works!” or for
short, WEW, his patented one-liner. This sounds like a throwaway remark,
but underneath there is a lot of wisdom.

There
are many factors to consider when choosing cams, and all of them were
presented at The Master’s three-day “crammed cam school,” which I
attended. There was enough material to cover three weeks!

But
the main thing I learned is that "The Master" really knows his
cams.

Every
cam manufacturer uses computers to match a cam’s profile with the
variables of Harley engine design: head flow characteristics, intake and
exhaust porting, ignition systems, gearing, displacement, and so on.

The question is, how will you, the
customer, know how to translate all this double-talk and computer output
into the right cam for your needs?

The answer is, you won’t. Instead,
concentrate on the kind of riding you want to do. Do you want high-end
performance or low-end torque? (You can’t have both.) Do you want
smooth running and good fuel economy, or an all-out street racer? What
is your trade-off between maximum power and a machine you can ride every
day, under all conditions.

When you know what you want from your
engine, go to your trusted tuner and tell him. Then instruct him to
choose the cam manufacturer that knows Harley engines best, and select
the model of cams they make that meet your needs.

From 25 years of hands-on experience
tuning and porting Harleys, the Crrane cams I sell are specially
designed for use with EPA formulated pump gasoline in California, and
other states where air pollution requirements are stringent.

Our cams are designed to make real-world
horsepower across a broad power band. And they’re compatible with all
Screamin’ Eagle high performance parts available for the Twin Cam 88
and 95 cubic inch engines.

If you’re a Twin Cam owner, be sure to
check out our new cam kit, especially for this model. It makes a big
improvement in that model’s performance.

For more information call the FLO
Headworks Customer Service Hotline at 805-481-6300 or
e-mail Perry and get a
quick reply.

When
your Harley makes its power in the orange band,
you're in "fun to ride" territory.

Are you like a lot of motorcycle owners,
paying close attention to maximum horsepower and torque numbers from
competing aftermarket tuners and suppliers?

If so, there are a couple of things you
should be aware of when comparing the specs. They come down to the
“fun to ride” factor.

In
my 25 years of experience working with Harleys, I’ve found the most
power available from a street Harley running unleaded gas has worked out
to about “one per.” What I mean by “one per” is one horsepower
and one foot pound of torque per cubic inch of engine displacement.

When
you think about it, that’s pretty good. Especially when that power is
made without sacrificing low-end performance and engine life expectancy.

If
your Harley engine is tuned right, you end up with a bike that’s both
fast and “streetable”—in other words, fun to ride!

But
that bike won’t necessarily put out the highest HP and torque numbers.

Simply
put, you can’t get performance at both ends of the power spectrum. Low
end power, low end torque—that’s what your Harley engine was
designed to produce. Why? Because that’s the kind of power that counts
in real-world riding—pulling away from stop lights, hauling a
passenger, passing a car at 60 MPH in top gear.

Take
away that torque and you destroy your Hog’s “fun to ride” factor.

But that's what you have to do to get those "high end"
numbers.

Maximum
horsepower ratings sell tuning and aftermarket stuff. So, for many
years companies specializing in
high-performance products built engines specifically for the Dyno, tuned for maximum HP and little else, just to
brag about higher HP numbers.

What
the high-horsepower advertisements don’t tell you is exactly how they
got their figures. Usually, the methods used eliminate all the
fun-to-ride factor, if the test bike is streetable at all!

Examples
of HP-increasing tricks that are misleading or make a bike no fun to
ride:

"Calibrating"
the Dyno unit to “compensate” for “weather”
or “altitude” to produce artificially high horsepower readouts

Your
Harley’s gotta run on pump gas, and you want it to have some grunt
when you’re pulling away from the lights. So don’t be mislead by the
advertisements you read in the magazines. Most high performance
companies place those ads to get your money, not for their credibility.

Our
philosophy at FLO Headworks it to improve the characteristics that are
inherently designed into the H-D engine: fantastic torque and lots of
real-world power.

Starting
at 2000 rpm on the Dyno curve, our Super
Port Flow can give you more real-world
horsepower and foot pounds of torque per cubic inch of engine
displacement than any other high-performance modification. The focus is on the
potential improvement on the lower RPM range where the Harley-Davidson
engine was designed to perform.

To
quote the owner of our first TC88 R&D project bike, “I can pull the
front wheel off the ground at 70 mph in third gear!” Now that’s
“Fun to Ride!”

For tuning advice about your
Harley-Davidson, call the FLO Headworks customer service hotline,
805-481-6300, or e-mail Perry at info@floheadworks.com.